Tuesday, August 9, 2016

How Not to Defend a Castle

When I was 10, my
father taught me how to attack a castle. Dad was teaching at a university in
Germany for four months. My whole family went with him, and we spent much of
the time traveling around Europe and exploring historical sites.

Shortly after we
arrived, my parents, my 7-year-old brother and I visited a castle in the nearby
town of Wurzburg. It was a hot day in early September. To get to the castle, we
had to climb a hill turning back and forth along switchbacks through a
vineyard. My brother and I were getting hot and uncomfortable, so my mom said
to my dad, “We need to do something to distract the kids.”

My dad called us
over and said, “Let’s pretend we’re Vikings, and we’re attacking this castle.
We have to walk up this hill wearing armor and carrying metal weapons. And you
see those little holes in the wall? People are standing behind those holes
shooting at us.”

And so he
continued. When we finally made it up the hill, he pointed out bastions jutting
out from the wall on either side of the gate so that archers or gunmen could
attack us from three sides. He showed us the draw bridge, the portcullis, and
the murder holes in the ceiling through which the castle’s defenders would drop
rocks and boiling oil on our heads. There were two walls with gatehouses whose
corridors turned to make it difficult to push cannons through. After looking at
the defenses for a while, I asked my dad, “Why are we attacking this castle,
again?” It seemed like a poor life choice.

But during the
Thirty Years War, that castle did fall. The story of its fall is a textbook
example of how not to defend a castle.

The young
lieutenant in charge of Wurzburg Castle heard that the army of Gustavus
Adolphus, the king of Sweden, was coming to attack his castle. The normal
procedure at this point would be to stock up on supplies, hide in the fortress
and wait for your enemy to get close enough to shoot them through those arrow
slits I saw. But this young lieutenant had a better idea: why not send a line
of men with guns outside the gate? They could shoot one volley at the incoming
army and then retreat inside the gate and pull up the drawbridge.

Unfortunately for
him, the attacking army arrived quicker than expected. The defending troops panicked
and fled before they had a chance to shoot. They ran inside the gate and
slammed it shut, but not before the other army was on the drawbridge. So, they
couldn’t pull the drawbridge up, which meant that the moat was useless.

The lieutenant was
disappointed, but he was not ready to give up. There was still a second wall
with a gatehouse. So, the defenders wheeled a cannon out between the
gatehouses. They planned to fire it at the attackers when they broke through
the gate, and then wheel the cannon in through the second gate while the
attackers were stunned. What could go wrong?

But the Lieutenant
hadn’t counted on the attackers’ secret weapon. They had a group of crazy
Scottish engineers who approached their general and said something to the
effect of, “Ooh! Can we blow up the gate? Pretty please?” The general agreed,
so the engineers put together a bomb called a petard and hung it on the gate.

The defenders
stood around the cannon waiting to hear the sound of a battering ram. Then the
gate exploded. The defenders panicked and fled through the second gate, leaving
the loaded cannon behind them.

The attackers
entered the courtyard between the gates and said, “Hey, cool! It’s a loaded
cannon!” Then they turned it around and used it to blast open the second gate.

Thus, Wurzburg
Castle fell.

Why am I telling
this story? First, because it’s funny. Second, because of a tendency I see in
my own life to make a similar mistake.

Several psalms compare
God to a fortress, a place of defense to whom people can go for help. Martin
Luther’s great hymn “A Mighty Fortress is our God” was based on Psalm 46. It
was also written in Germany, possibly in a castle similar to the one in
Wurzburg. Psalm 18:2 says, “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my
deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of
my salvation, my stronghold.”

The young
Lieutenant’s big mistake was failing to trust his fortress. Instead of relying
on the built-in defenses that so impressed me when I was 10, he relied on his
own strength and planning. He sent his men outside the fortress’s protection,
foolishly thinking that their strength could defend the castle better than the
castle could defend them.

But how often do I
do the same? When anxiety presses in on me, when something goes wrong in my
life, or the lives of my friends, my country, or the world, I tend to ask,
“What can I do to fix this?” And sometimes, the answer is, “nothing.” But
instead of accepting my helplessness and trusting in God, I try to find my own
ways of making things work out. Or I panic and abandon the things I can do,
leaving a loaded cannon for my enemies to use.

Defending a castle
does require effort, and God graciously chooses to use us to make a difference.
But we cannot rely on our own power. We must take refuge in our Fortress,
trusting Him to protect us.

About Me

I'm a Ph.D student at the University of Notre Dame studying Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity. I also have a BA from Brandeis University and an MTS from Notre Dame. After college, I lived in Taiwan and edited an English-teaching magazine. I love traveling and learning languages. I'm also fascinated with philosophy, which was one of my majors in college, and I write poetry, some of which I post on this blog. Most importantly, I am a sincere Christian. I believe that Jesus is God and trust Him to forgive my sins and enable me to live the life I was made to live.